James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Peculiar, huh?” Still she wouldn’t look at him. “What was peculiar about it?”

Paul hesitated before answering. “My three colleagues on the RFP project took me out to lunch.”

“They take you someplace good?” Callie scowled at the glasses in her hands. “Or they take you to Sonic?”

“Headlights,” he sighed. “They took me to Headlights.”

Callie looked at him at last. “No shit!” She laughed harshly. “Hellfire, son, that means they like you!”

“That piss you off?” he said.

“Hell no,” she said, a little too heartily. “Just because you went to a titty bar for lunch?”

“Whoa!” said Paul. “It’s not that kind of place.”

“ ’Course it’s not!” Callie waggled her fingers, as if copping a feel. “It’s a gentlemen’s club. Bring the goddamn family.”

“A little slack, Callie, okay?” Paul said. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“Course not. I bet if you was to ask half the guys in Headlights, it was the other guy’s idea to go.”

Paul folded his hands in his lap. “You asked me,” he said. “I told you.”

“Yeah.” She dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yeah, I reckon I did.”

She twirled her glasses and tensed her legs, and Paul was certain she was going to get up and walk out, and he’d never see her again. Fuck it, he thought. Let her go.

Callie drew a deep breath and sighed. “Saw Mr. X yesterday,” she said.

“Ah.”

“Didn’t go so well.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

Callie grimaced, as if to say, What are you gonna do?

“Why are you telling me?” Paul said.

She sighed again. “Well, that’s the question, ain’t it?”

“It’s not like you owe me an explanation.”

“I know that. I just needed to tell somebody, and I figured I might as well tell you.”

“Okay.” Paul was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear this.

“Basically,” Callie said, swinging her sunglasses and glancing round the room again. “Basically. .”

Paul crossed his arms. ‘Ow’s Yer Knickers flickered at the corner of his eye.

“The sumbitch wanted me to loan him some money.” She looked at Paul, and even in the dim light her eyes looked red from crying. “And he wanted to fuck me.”

Paul felt his face get hot. “Did you?” he said.

Callie’s face flushed and her eyes burned, but she said nothing. She did, Paul thought. She fucked him. Son of a bitch!

“You got no right to ask me that,” she said in a low voice.

“No? You can give me a hard time for going to a ‘titty bar’ “—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“that isn’t really a titty bar, but I can’t ask an obvious question.”

“Paul—”

“You tell me your boyfriend’s back, you call in sick—”

“Paul, shut up.” Callie gave him a look that drilled right through him. Paul glared back, but his mind was racing. If Callie had fucked Mr. X, then why would she come all the way out here, to the wilder fringes of Lamar, just to tell me about it?

“Nothing happened.” Callie kept Paul steadily in her sights. “With Mr. X. I didn’t do it.”

Paul said nothing. He was astonished at himself, at how badly he wanted Callie to be telling the truth.

“I gave the sumbitch the money he wanted,” she said, “and then I told him to get lost. I figured that was stupid enough. I didn’t have to fuck him on top of it.”

Paul noticed Charlotte crouching in the shadows under the table, gazing wide-eyed at Callie, her tail switching back and forth.

“Callie,” he said, but she cut him off with a gesture.

“You want to know where I was all day?” Her voice trembled. “I was curled up on my bed bawling like a little girl.” Callie stood and pushed the chair away. She fumbled with her glasses. “And then I came out here, like an idiot, thinking that you could. . that you might. .”

Under the table Charlotte watched Callie with her furious, hollow-eyed gaze. Callie started for the door, and Paul jumped up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You said you were going to see this guy, and I just didn’t know. .”

He gingerly laid his hand on her warm shoulder, and when she didn’t pull away, he turned her and draped both arms around her. Over her shoulder he kept an eye on Charlotte.

Callie hunched tensely in his arms. “Ain’t your fault,” she said at last. She relaxed and tilted her forehead against Paul’s. “Ain’t his either, really. I should know by now.”

“Callie.” Paul folded his arms around her neck, and Callie wrapped her arms around his waist. Over her shoulder, Paul saw that Charlotte had disappeared. As best he could with Callie’s warm cheek pressed into his neck, he scanned the apartment for the ghostly cat.

“It’s okay,” said Paul, not certain that it was. “It’s okay.” He wondered what Charlotte would do if Callie stayed the night.

Callie unwrapped her arms from around his waist and fixed Paul with a narrow, meaningful look.

“What?” he said. The hair went up on the back of his neck, and he wondered if Charlotte was doing something behind him.

“Put your shoes on, stud,” said Callie. “Let’s go for a ride.”

CALLIE DROVE. She didn’t say much as they left town, but Paul was satisfied to watch her long fingers grasp the big black knob of the gearshift and ram it from first to second to third. Her whole arm tensed when she shifted, and the strap of her tank top pulled away from her shoulder. Paul wanted to lean across the long, bench seat and lick her collarbone from one end to the other.

Well past Lamar city limits, out beyond the new strip malls and the enormous limestone grocery stores and the new subdivisions of vast, square, luxury homes on little plots of mesquite and juniper, the truck roared and rattled towards the salmon strip of sky where the sun had just set. The big, four-lane state highway swooped around and under the hills, and the wind rushed through the windows, thumping in Paul’s ears and rippling his t-shirt. Even this late in the evening, the air was still hot. “The AC don’t work,” was all Callie had said since they’d left his apartment. “Never did.” But Paul didn’t mind. The hot wind felt good to him, polishing his skin and loosening his joints.

Farther from Lamar the hills turned black against the turquoise sky. The traffic thinned out. Here and there a faint light shone out of the darkness on one side of the road or the other, but mostly the view was of the pavement bleached by the headlights, the humpbacks of the hills, and the stars starting out of a rich black sky. About twenty minutes beyond the last sign of civilization, a little green sign — LONESOME KNOB STATE PARK — pointed to the right, and Callie downshifted just enough to make the turn onto the ranch road in an unholy clashing of gears and a rattle of spraying gravel. This two-lane road dipped and rolled through the dark even more like a roller-coaster than the big four laner, and Paul caught glimpses of bare rock along the shoulder, and stubby cactus, and gnarled live oaks, and, once, down a sudden, precipitous drop, a ranch house lit like a miniature railroad model by its own yard light at the bottom of a steep valley.

“Where we going?” Paul shouted over the roar of the wind and the growling of the truck.

“Place I know,” Callie shouted back, shooting him a grin in the greenish light of the dashboard.

A few minutes later Callie downshifted again and crept along the road, watching the brush beyond the narrow shoulder on the right. The truck chugged along, going glug glug glug , until at last a long, steel gate rolled into the headlights. Callie pulled into the sunbaked ruts of the turnoff, jammed the gears into park, and jumped out of the truck. Paul leaned out the window and read a gunshot TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED sign, while Callie stepped up on the lowest rung of the gate, leaned fetchingly over one end, and did something to the latch that made the whole long gate swing slowly inward. Glug glug glug glug glug , went the truck, rocking Paul and sending a thrill through his loins. Then Callie trotted back through the headlights to the truck, jammed the gears into first, and chugged over the thrumming cattle grate. When she stopped again, Paul said, “I’ll get it,” and he jumped down out of the truck into the hot shriek of crickets and pushed the gate shut; the metal was still warm from the day’s heat.